Flash Fiction, Volume One

Safe Landing, by Michael Braswell

   The harvest that grew in the loamy soil in the county of Suffolk would have to wait after the Americans arrived.  Crushed stones from broken pieces of London transformed wheat fields and vegetable gardens into runways where instruments of survival and retribution descended in droves. In short order, farm fields became airfields, home to B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators complements of the United States Eighth Air Force.

   The big birds took off with a roar for their daylight bombing runs, sometimes as few as a dozen or so and on other missions several hundred took flight. Young boys and old men watched for their return. Always fewer in number, some relatively intact and others trailing smoke from the sky, flying on a wing and a prayer. If pilots or crew members survived 25 bombing runs, they were relieved from flying duty. Some did. Many didn’t. The average life expectancy of a crewman in 1943 was eleven missions.

   Captain Edward Hampshire, the RAF liaison officer, drummed his fingers on the table in the empty officer’s mess while his American counterpart, Captain Wes Baker, looked over the daily report.

   He smiled at his fellow officer. “How about a cuppa of good English tea?”

   “You know damn well, I prefer my coffee black, hot with nothing added,” Wes Baker replied without looking up.

   Alone in the lounge, the two men sipped their tea and coffee in silence.

   Wes Baker stared at the window. It was beginning to rain.

   “That rain isn’t going to help the crews returning from their sortie.”

   Ed tamped tobacco into his pipe and lit it. “The boys have been through a lot—we all have. Especially with the daylight raids in ’43 before we got fighter escorts.

   Wes took a sip of coffee. “Bremen, Regensburg, Halberstadt and the ball bearing plant in Shweinfurt. I don’t know how any us made it back from Shweinfurt.”

   “Black Thursday,” Ed replied, relighting his pipe. “They limped back, three with engines on fire, not to mention wounded, dead and missing crewmen. There must have been two hundred or more German fighters harassing the Fortresses all the way.”

   Wes looked at his hands. “Out of almost 300 bombers, only 33 made it back undamaged.”

   Both men grew silent, lost in what they wished they could forget.

   Ed Hampshire got up from the table and returned with fresh cups of hot tea and coffee.

   “Wes, do you mind me asking you a question?”

   Wes drank from the steaming cup. “Ask Away, Captain.”

   “I noticed every time you return from a mission, the first thing you do is walk down to that stand of beech and maple trees and stay for quite a while. You are the only one that does that and I was just wondering why?”

   Wes rubbed his eyes and looked back out at the rain. “I do two things. I thank God for sparing my life and keeping my crew safe. I thank God for giving us life and breath for one more day.”

   Wes returned to his coffee.

   “And the other thing?”

   Looking up from his coffee, Wes seemed to stare into a distance only he could see.

   “I ask God to forgive me for all the people I killed when we dropped those bombs.”

Leave a Message, by Michael Braswell

   912-928-4577 . . . the number Johnny Elrod called every Sunday at 7 p.m. sharp for the weekly chat with his grandmother. Tomorrow he would turn 70, forty years since she passed.

   Born in the late 1800s, she had survived a string of hard times. Mothering 10 children, losing the family farm during the Great Depression and living hand to mouth as share croppers had ground her down to fine edge. She asked for no quarter and when necessary, she gave no quarter. She prayed for relief and when none came, she kept working the fields.

   As the oldest grandson, Johnny spent long hot summers with her in the dirt road farmhouse she called home. She got him like no one else. He could tell her things . . . ask her questions. When Johnny came to see her, there was a twinkle in her eye as a slow smile crept across her weatherworn face.

   He threw another log on the fire. The grey sky outside promised fresh snow by morning. Johnny remembered when she turned 70. He was there with all the others celebrating and remembering her life’s better moments. Now in his turning, he missed her.

   Tomorrow evening, he and Lois would join Louisa, Mattie and their families for his birthday celebration at Maden’s Steakhouse. Lois set the rules: no presents and no cellphones, just good times and laughter. After coffee and cake, it was goodbye to loved ones and another year.

   Johnny parked the truck while Lois went inside and turned on the lights. He stopped for a moment and looked up at the moon hiding behind heavy clouds. A full moon and a starlit sky would have been nice on his birthday. He smiled at the thought of it.

   Johnny reached for his cellphone before turning in. He froze . . . a missed call . . . 912-928-4577.

   His breath caught in his throat.

   When he regained a semblance of his bearings, he reached out, trembling with apprehension and the hint of hope long lost, dialed his grandmother’s number.

   Just like in times past, on the fifth ring, someone answered.

   An old woman’s rasp whispered, “Leave a message.”

About the author: A former prison psychologist, Michael Braswell taught ethics and justice issues at East Tennessee State University. He has published books on moral issues, ethics, human relations and counseling as well as four short story collections. His most recent books are "When Jesus Went to the Cracker Barrel" and "Gracious Plenty." His website is michaelcbraswell.com. 

Finally, by Andrea Tillmanns

   He hastily clicked the left mouse button. Done. He had finally dared to do it. His stomach began to rumble, and he noticed sweat on his forehead. But now there was no turning back. He had quit. And he had taken the opportunity to tell his boss everything he had never dared to say before. What he had swallowed over and over again for years. He had listed all the mean things his boss had said, the increasingly unrealistic demands, the ever-longer working hours that were necessary to meet them, and all the colleagues who had long since given up and quit because of them.

   Finally.

   His stomach growled even louder. Now he no longer had a job. He was over forty – would he find something new? Should he have worded the e-mail differently? His job reference would certainly be poor. What had he written in his anger?

   Slowly, he calmed down a little. All the years he had worked there … simply thrown away on a whim. Just because his boss had made one comment too many, had once too often showered him with tasks after quitting time that would have flooded his weekend with work. Wouldn’t it have been better to react differently? What if it had all been a huge mistake?

   “Ping!”

   He clicked on the newly arrived e-mail before his rumbling stomach could stop him.

   “Your message could not be delivered. Status: 550 Unknown user: Donlad Smith.”

   He had made a typo. He couldn’t believe it – he had written the name so many times, and today of all days, in the most important e-mail he had ever sent to his boss, he had made a typo.

   Suddenly, he was overcome with an unexpected feeling of elation. Now he had a second chance. Now he could think carefully about what he wanted to write – or whether he should just delete the e-mail and continue as he had done in recent years.

   He read the e-mail again, slowly, calmly. Finally, he shook his head. He had suspected that he would make a mistake in his anger. It was good that he had the chance to adjust it.

   He added the missing comma, corrected the e-mail address, and clicked “Send” again.

About the author: Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The Prairie Schooner, The Adirondack Review, Clarion, Spillwords, 101 Words, The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash (Iron Faerie Publishing), The Piker Press, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de. 

Big Sky Showdown at the Little Pond, by Nicholas Viglietti

   She makes her way out the door. She’s got a real, big-time, completely legit career. I wipe wake-up gunk out of the disillusioned crevices of my regretful and desperately bleary eyes.

   Our home is silent. I rip-a-curse of rage at the universe – “Damn, my reprobate style! My peculiar brand of wayward chutzpah.” The beats of my heart feel like the leaves outside, decaying on the ground. Fall always makes us realize how far we must go to get back up.

   The numbers on the clock read running behind. Change never comes from the maniacal rush. Faster never saved any souls. I stagger out the door, frowzy and draggin’ my spirit. Crisp air hits my nostrils, and the trees breathe purity.

   My dilapidated truck always takes a few attempts, but it ain’t missed a horizon line yet. Five turns, and benedictions, and the engine rumbles. Stopping at a red-light, the cadence of an electric-cowboy tune, combined with the putrid scent of pristine death – a squashed cat, all nine lives spent – shoots me to an old scene, like a shotgun to the memory glands.

   I was gettin’ out of an effaced rig of neon green, yanking on my house-of-a-pack, too heavy for my neophyte back. I was gone, there was trail to tromp, the inclines that take you out and into the infinite nowhere...the Mont-ucky wilderness, and the exigencies of lower status on the food-chain.

   I wanted to puke from the high elevation and thin oxygen. The view made the title-worthy grade: Big-Sky Country! Every morning was raw with big adventure – hell, you were just happy to zip your skull in the comfort of a sleeping-bag at night, and the body always ached, but it beat the gnaw of predatory jaws.

   That’s when I almost met my fate in those hallowed woods – damn near shook the maker’s hand, whoopin’ it up over spectacular wildlands.

   We had left two axes behind from our misery-whipping of logs that blocked the path of the trail. I was alone, retrieved the tools, and U-turned my steps, going back to camp – two hours till sunset. In the deep miles of the Bitterroot backcountry, I descended steep dirt, and the trail swooped left, skirting a pond, where jagged peaks took bites like teeth out of the sky.

   And there, up to its chest in the pond, was a massive moose cooling itself off, dunking in the glacial water. I stopped and marveled in a way that city-slickers don’t consider.

   The quiet hung eerily, the moose splashed carelessly, and I recollected the hunter’s advice. “I ain’t scared of anything out in dese darn woods – except, of course, for a moose, that is.”

   The escape route hooked into a thicket of trees. It was time to make a furtive exit. I glanced back to sear a memory. The moose, twenty feet away, glowered intentions of territorial menace into my soul.

   It was a big sky showdown at the little pond.

About the author: Nicholas Viglietti is a writer from Sacramento, CA. After Katrina ravaged the gulf coast, he rebuilt homes there for 2 years. Up in Mon-tucky, he cut trails in the wilderness. He pedaled from Sac-town to S.D. He’s a seventh-life party-hack, attempting to rip chill lines in the madness. Socials: Insta - @nico_chillietti, X - @nviglietti1

Clean Slate, by Arvee Fantilagan

   My mother scratched her eyes, fighting to stay awake against the pill I slipped into her drink. She said her husband was coming home soon so I should get going.

   Of course that was a lie.

   She only spent one drunken night with whoever was the scum that fathered me.

   The truth was that she’s just politely shooing me away, her uninvited guest dishing out trivia about all the decisions that led to this sad crossroads in her life.

   “You kept telling everyone that you dropped out of college to become a model,” I tried another. “But you just wanted to spite your mother, didn’t you?”

   Her eyes widened. “Who told you that?!”

   “You, mom!” I bleated. “Each time they showed one of those fancy girls on TV!”

   My hands grasped hers, desperate. “I’m telling you, mom: I’m that baby inside you! From the future!”

   That seemed to stun her. For a moment, it looked like she would pull me in for a hug, the way she drunkenly did whenever I picked her up and dragged her to bed.

   Instead, she grinned, caressing the bump in her belly. “So you’re saying my daughter will grow up as pretty as you, miss?”

   Ugh.

   It took all my strength not to rain on her cheeriness. Beauty does run in our family, but along with it, all the glares, all the leers—

   All the painful choices that will be forced on her later in the face of motherhood and poverty.

   On both of us.

   She got up to her feet; her eyes were puffy.

   “Anyway, I’m really sorry but— ” she at last collapsed into my arms.

   I steadied her back up, bracing myself for that familiar stench in her drunken breath, her wilted body against mine. We shambled to her room together, one step at a time, her dead weight growing heavier across my slowly disintegrating arms.

   “I’m so sorry for the trouble,” she murmured.

   “I'm used to it,” I whispered back. It was a nightly ritual, a mindless chore after school, then later after work, finding her passed out drunk in front of the TV. Routine. Mechanical. Precious. I laid her head on the pillow and changed her clothes. Then I tucked her into bed.

   The same bed she would end up sharing with so many just so she could afford to feed the two of us.

   Where the last one would get carried away too much, to the point that she would no longer wake up.

   “Thank you, dear,” she mumbled, eyes already half-closed.

   I thanked her back. For doing everything she could to buy me the dresses she never got to wear, the toys and the gadgets she always wished she had, the sweets and the treats she was never given enough.

   Then I apologized for them and all her effort, when I only ended up going down the same exact path.

   “I’ll always love you, mom.” I kissed her on the cheek. “Even if I don’t exist anymore.”

   She nodded back the sleepiest smile, the drug completely taking over.

   In the morning, she will wake up and weep over the baby she didn’t even have a chance to hold. But she will live. More importantly, it won’t. And along with it, all the anguish that would have broken them both over the years.

   Soon, she started dozing off in peace—a sight I used to see every night, yet never cherished enough.

   “Enjoy the rest of your life, mom,” I said as we both faded away.

About the author: Arvee Fantilagan grew up in the Philippines, lives in Japan, and has more of his works at sites.google.com/view/arveef. He hopes to write a better bio someday.

My Running Buddy, by Nicholas De Marino

   I have brain cancer. These night jogs won't fix that, but they boil off worry. Don't worry, I'll be fine. Watch out for my running buddy, though. He's a skyscraper of pancakes in an earthquake.

   Buddha chirps: 

rising from basin

night sky flashes

radiant cheek 

   “Nice. One,” I huff.

   He grins a graveyard of teeth.    

   PFFFTT.

   Rotting fruit and stale rice smell chases us up the sidewalk through a cloud of blinking, winking stars. Bats swoop and pluck them from the air. So does my running buddy. One, two, three-four-five vanish down his throat.

   We jog more. It rains.

   Plip-plip-plip. Then plop, something bounces off my head. Plop-plop-plop. Dozens of pudgy black pods bounce on the pavement. My running buddy picks one up, shows how it looks like his pinky finger, and laughs. Then they spasm and split. Wet butterfly wings shiver silver mucus and blood as they moth their way to the moon.

   Buddha sings: 

blessings drip from sacred wings

periodically 

   Then my skin unzips.

   From my navel up my chest, jigsaw teeth yawn. Shiny, glabrous organs balloon from my rib cage and pull wire arteries and veins taut. I stumble forward and try to yank them back in. They won't budge.

   Plink-plink-plink. Rain pelts my chrome heart, lungs, liver, and maze of guts. They twist painfully in the wind.

   My running buddy smiles.

   “But. My. Brain,” I puff as my organs reel back into place and my skin zips up.

   My running buddy pinches his features into the center of his face and draws a circle around my skull.

   SCHLUP.

   My skull flaps open and out go my jelly brains. There it is, a black stone the size of a testicle. My running buddy taps it. Black. Gray. White. He stuffs my brains back in and laughs.

   We jog more. It rains more.

   Buddha chants: 

footfalls

in rainfalls

plip-plip-plip 

   “Cute,” I blow.

   BLLLURRP.

   My running buddy burps up five blinking, winking stars.

   Two weeks later, the surgeon cuts out a tumor that looks nothing like a testicle. I put it in a jar on my nightstand.

   Two weeks after that, I get back from a jog and the jar shaking as butterfly wings beat against the glass. I unscrew the lid and they moth their way to the moon.

   The tumor's gone.

   I smell rotting fruit and stale rice.

About the author: Nicholas De Marino is an analog head swapper, furniture saboteur, and escaped content farm workhorse. He has several writing credits in bathroom stalls and a hopelessly indulgent column in foofaraw. ¡Viva SFPA y Codex! More at nicholasdemarino.blogspot.com.

Even Safe Memories Have an Edge, by Foster Trecost

They gave us an hour for lunch. More than enough most days, but that afternoon I needed every minute. Plus a few. When I got back, I tried to glide by my boss’s door but he caught me mid-frame. He noted the time and scolded my tardiness. Then asked if I’d seen the accident.

I’d seen it all right but couldn’t talk about it. Not so soon after. I mimicked remembrance and gave a one-word response, employing the verbal economy I use with everyone. He wanted details, but he wouldn’t get them. Tragic. That’s all I said. It would’ve been too risky to say more.

Here’s what happened: Force flung the driver to a crumpled mound, but no one seemed to notice. The car, that’s where we looked. Filled with fire and smoke, but was it screaming? Was the car screaming? We wished it had been, but it wasn’t the car. The screams came from inside the car. Then they stopped. And there I stood on the corner, scoffing at my attackers. Unseen but always close. I knew they’d try something. Emotions can be so predictable.

After work I walked in the general direction of my apartment, but fatigue suggested I rest. Nearly dark and no one around, I found a park and sat center-bench. And never saw them coming. Another attack, this time an ambush. My only hope was to hide in a memory, so I dove into the safest one I could find. I was ten, and from bricks and board, built a ramp. With eyes squeezed to slits, I felt a punch when my bike hit the incline. Then beautiful silence, but deeper than just the absence of sound. More like erasure. I was a clean canvas. Time stood still. Until I landed. That’s where the bad thoughts were, waiting for me.

Even safe memories have an edge.

I’d been home about an hour when my grandmother called. She heard about the accident, and it stoked her memory. So she called to stoke mine. She said it wasn’t my fault. But she had shifted to a different accident. The one that changed everything. For my eighth birthday, I asked for a model train. The kind that pulled boxcars, not people. I was specific. So when my parents presented an Amtrak-styled passenger version, my disappointment sent them after an exchange. And I never saw them again. It wasn’t their fault. And it wasn’t the other driver, either. It was me. They found a new train in the trunk. Just like the one I wanted.

“Nobody blames you,” she said.

Except the one talking. And the one listening. And that’s when she stopped being my grandmother. She turned sharp and accusing. But I’d been blamed enough. So I changed the subject, asked if she had plans for the weekend. And let her ease back to my grandmother.

“There’s the game on Sunday. I guess I’ll watch it.”

That’s all she said, but it was enough. Another ambush. This one disguised as a lonely old lady using football to resurrect my long-gone grandfather. My emotions, they’re getting clever. And this time, they got the best of me.

Sometimes I win. Sometimes they win. It was easier on my bike. Time stood still.

Now, at best, it just slows down.

About the author: Foster Trecost writes stories that are mostly made up. They tend to follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short. Recent work appears in Literally Stories, Fabula Argentea, Across the Margin, and Roi Fainéant. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.

Image credit: Krin Van Tatenhove via Midjourney